The Education of Ezra Maxwell: A Side Story
by RavenTears
Summary: For all of you out there who have read Aishiteru, this is just a little songfic sidestory chronicling the education of Ezra Mihkail Maxwell as dispensed by pilot 02. Have fun!
1. Geography/History - Part I

Disclaimer: Despite pleading, begging, bribing, threatening, whining and throwing tantrums, I do not, alas, own Gundam Wing or any of it's characters. Whoever they do belong to, are probably very rich and most likely in Japan (I think Sunrise, Sostsu, and Bandai...prolly some others too). I am poor. I spent all my money on anime. Please don't sue!

  
  


The Education of Ezra Maxwell: 

A Side Story

_Lesson One_

Geography/History - Part I

  


Duo Maxwell lead his son into the living room by the shoulder and stood him in front of the stereo. He inserted a disk and left the player on standby. 

"And now Son, your first geography/history lesson: The countries of the world as of AD 1993." Duo tapped the play button and a voice came through the speakers:   


_And now, the nations of the world! Brought to you by: Yakko Warner!_  


"Daddy, who is that?" 

"Just listen, Ezra."  


_United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru; Republic Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean, Greenland, El Salvador, too_.

_Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Honduras, Guyana, and still; Guatemala, Bolivia, then Argentina, and Ecuador, Chile, Brazil_.

_Costa Rica, Belize, Nicaragua, Bermuda, Bahamas, Tobago, San Juan; Paraguay, Uruguay, Suriname and French Guiana, Barbados and Guam_.  


"Daddy, where are all these places?" 

"Um well ... they were all over the Earth."

"But where are they _now_?"

"Well, you see ... you know how your Aunt Relena always says that borders are the cause of wars? Well she kinda ... blurred the lines dividing these countries when she abolished all borders in 195."__  


_Norway and Sweden and Iceland and Finland, and Germany, now one piece; Switzerland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Turkey, and Greece_.  


_Poland, Romania, Scotland, Albania, Ireland, Russia, Oman; Bulgaria, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Cyprus, Iraq, and Iran_.  


_There's Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, both Yemens, Kuwait, and Bahrain; The Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, and Portugal, France, England, Denmark, and Spain_.  


Hilde walked past the living room, eyeing some bills. She then walked backwards past the living room again and watched her husband and son, standing in front of their stereo. She paused and listened to the song playing and voiced over the music, "You know, I've only heard three places so far that still exist!" She then shook her head and walked back out to the scrapyard office.__  


_India, Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan, Thailand, Nepal, and Bhutan; Kampuchea, Malaysia, then Bangladesh, Asia, and China, Korea, Japan_.  


_Mongolia, Laos, and Tibet, Indonesia, the Philippine islands, Taiwan; Sri Lanka, New Guinea, Sumatra, New Zealand, then Borneo and Vietnam_.  


_Tunisia, Morocco, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe, Djibouti, Botswana; Mozambique, Zambia, Swaziland, Gambia, Guinea, Algeria, Ghana_.  


_Burundi, Lesotho, and Malawi, Togo, the Spanish Sahara is gone; Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Liberia, Egypt, Benin, and Gabon_.  


_Tanzania, Somalia, Kenya, and Mali, Sierra Leone and Algier; Dahomey, Namibia, Senegal, Libya, Cameroon, Congo, Zaire_.  


_Ethiopia, Guinea-Bissau, Madagascar, Rwanda, Mahore, and Cayman; Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Yugoslavia_.  


_Crete, Mauritania, then Transylvania, Monaco, Liechtenstein, Malta and Palestine, Fiji, Australia, Sudan!_  


The song ended and Duo removed the disk and handed it to his son. Ezra looked at it, puzzled and then Duo said, "Practice it. I want to hear you sing it tomorrow. Same time, same place." Ezra sighed melodramatically and sulked up the stairs to his room. Duo watched him go, apparently quite pleased with himself, and then followed Hilde out to the scrapyard office.


	2. Geography/History - Part II

Disclaimer: Despite pleading, begging, bribing, threatening, whining and throwing tantrums, I do not, alas, own Gundam Wing or any of it's characters. Whoever they do belong to, are probably very rich and most likely in Japan (I think Sunrise, Sostsu, and Bandai...prolly some others too). I am poor. I spent all my money on anime. Please don't sue!   
  
  
  


The Education of Ezra Maxwell: 

A Side Story 

Lesson Two 

Geography/History - Part II   
  


Duo Maxwell lead his son into the living room by the shoulder and stood him in front of the stereo. He inserted a disk and left the player on standby. 

"Ready for your second geography/history lesson Son? This one has some personal meaning." Duo tapped the play button and a voice came through the speakers:   
  


And now, Wakko Warner with the fifty U.S. states and their capitols.   
  


"What's a U.S. state?" 

"A long time ago, there was a country called the United States, or U.S. for short. It was divided up into fifty states, which are kinda like smaller countries within a country. Now listen." 

"Whatever you say...." And then a voice with a cockney accent started singing after a lead in by a fiddle.   
  


Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Indianapolis, Indiana, and Columbus is the Capitol of Ohio. There's Montgomery, Alabama south of Helena, Montana, then there's Denver, Colorado under Boise, Idaho   
  


Texas has Austin, then we go north to Massachusetts, Boston and Albany, New York; Tallahassee, Florida, and Washington, D.C.; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Nashville, Tennessee   
  


Elvis used to hang out there a lot you know   
  


Trenton's in New Jersey, north of Jefferson, Missouri; you've got Richmond in Virginia; South Dakota has Pierre; Harrisburg's in Pennsylvania, and Augusta's up in Maine and here is Providence, Rhode Island next to Dover Delaware   
  


Concord, New Hampshire - just a quick jaunt to Montpelier which is up in Vermont; Hartford's in Connecticut, so pretty in the fall, and Kansas has Topeka; Minnesota has St. Paul   
  


Juneau's in Alaska, and there's Lincoln in Nebraska and it's Raleigh out in North Carolina and then there's Madison, Wisconsin and Olympia in Washington, Phoenix, Arizona and Lansing, Michigan   
  


Here's Honolulu - Hawaii's a joy; Jackson, Mississippi and Springfield, Illinois! South Carolina with Columbia down the way and Annapolis in Maryland on Chesapeake Bay   
  


They have wonderful clam chowder!   
  


Cheyenne is in Wyoming and perhaps you make you home in Salt Lake City out in Utah where the buffalo roam! Atlanta's down in Georgia and there's Bismark, North Dakota and you can live in Frankfort in your old Kentucky home!   
  


Salem in Oregon, from there we join Little Rock in Arkansas; Iowa's got Des Moines; Sacramento, California; Oklahoma and it's city; Charleston, West Virginia and Nevada, Carson City!   
  


That's all the capitols there are!   
  


The song ended and Duo removed the disk and handed it to his son. Ezra looked at his father with the most pathetic puppy-dog eyes he could muster, but to no avail. 

"Practice it." 

"But Da-ad!" 

"Did I stutter? Go." 

"But those places don't exist anymore!" 

"Didn't California sink into the Pacific?" Hilde commented, who had been seated on the couch, without looking up from her book. 

"No. It. Didn't. Whose side are you on, anyway?" 

"Ezra's" 

"Traitor." 

"You're lucky we have such a comfy couch." Duo got the hint. 

"I love you." 

"Love you, too," Hilde said and kissed the air in Duo's general vicinity, her eyes never leaving her book. "But you're still sleeping on the couch," she said as she turned the page. Duo grumbled something sounding like "Go to your room and practice" to Ezra, and he trotted up the stairs. When he had left, Duo sat beside Hilde and whispered something in her ear. Hilde turned to stare at him, the book and threat of sleeping arrangements forgotten, and then quickly dashed up the stairs into the bedroom, with Duo chasing after her. 


	3. Earth Science - Astronomy

Disclaimer: Despite pleading, begging, bribing, threatening, whining and throwing tantrums, I do not, alas, own Gundam Wing or any of it's characters. Whoever they do belong to, are probably very rich and most likely in Japan (I think Sunrise, Sostsu, and Bandai...prolly some others too). I am poor. I spent all my money on anime. Please don't sue!

  
  


The Education of Ezra Maxwell: 

A Side Story

_Lesson Three_

Earth Science - Astronomy

  


In the still-pretty-darn-early hours of the morning, a small, blue-black haired daemon snuck down the stairway and into the living room, all the while clinging to the stark white walls. After scouting for his parents and discovering the family vehicle missing from its usual spot in the junkyard driveway, he decided that they had gone to the supermarket without him. His ploy worked; they bought his I'm-still-sleeping-like-an-angel-after-all-that-fun-we-had-at-the-dentist's-office-yesterday bit hook, line, and sinker. 

He figured he had, at a bare minimum, one hour to accomplish his goal. He ran into his mother's office and took his father's lock picking set out of the filing cabinet. Mommy had taken it from Daddy when she caught him trying to liberate a junkyard rat from a trap with it last week. They had fought for a while, but then they finally reached a compromise. Mommy would buy the traps that didn't kill the rats if Daddy promised to set them free far, FAR, away from the house and "business," as Mommy called the scrapheap in the backyard. Mommy kept Daddy's tools as collateral. Ezra was pretty sure Mommy had won.

With practiced motions, he coerced the last tumbler of the lock on his father's computer desk open. As he forced the drawer ajar, Ezra found himself faced with a multitude of disks; some named, some not. He pulled one of the unnamed ones from the back. Its label was blank, but not clean; a small dark stain in the upper corner was the only distinguishing mark. Considering it a likely target, Ezra crossed the living room to the entertainment center and slid the disk into the computer. Instead of automatically turning on the stereo, the TV flickered on. Ezra sighed at the rotating image of some strange spaceship before ejecting the disk and going back to the gaping drawer.

Selecting more methodically this time, he dismissed the unlabeled disks entirely, lest they all turn out to be spaceships. Ezra skimmed some of the titles he could decipher with his limited knowledge of the written language. A set of diskettes bearing his name caught his attention. Ezra pulled the two disks he already possessed out of his pocket and compared them to the ones staring at him from within the drawer. He wasn't sure what the "EDU" part of "EZRA-EDU" meant, but he knew his numbers. The labels in his hand read 1 and 2, respectively; logically, the next in the series would be three. He reached for the correlating disk and turned back to the stereo. He hesitated, then spun back around, grabbed all the "EZRA-EDU" disks and ran up to his room.

Once safely withing the confines of his bedroom, he sat down at his computer and inserted disk three. The sound of sleigh bells emanating from the speakers seemed slightly out of season, but soon an entire orchestra joined in. Ezra sighed. This was definitely the same as the others.

  


_Everybody lives on street in a city, or village, or a town, for what it's worth_.__

  


_And they're all inside a country which is part of a continent, that sits upon a planet known as Earth._

"I'm not. I live on L2, a _colony_," Ezra muttered spitefully at the computer jukebox.__

  


_And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains which is out there spinning silently in space._

_And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals, and also the entire human race!_

  


"This thing is SO outdated."__

  


_It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny; we're just tiny little specks about the size of_ _Mickey Rooney._

_It's big and black and inky, and we are small and dinky,_

_It's a big universe and we're not!_

  


"They finally got something right! But who's 'Mickey Rooney'?" Ezra opened a word processor and typed (to the best of his ability) the name for future research.__

  


_And we're part of a vast interplanetary system stretching seven hundred billion miles long._

"I think those numbers are off," he said over the song. He typed that up too.__

  


_With nine planets and a Sun, we think the Earth's the only one that has life on it although we could be wrong._

"What about Mars?"__

  


_Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids including meteors and Halley's Comet too._

_And there's over fifty moon floating out there like balloons in a panoramic trillion mile view!_

_And still it's all a speck among a hundred billion stars in galaxy we call the Milky Way._

_It's sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other, and still that's just a fraction of the way._

Ezra added that number to his list.__

  


_'Cause there's a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across sky filled with constellations, planets, moons, and stars._

_And still the universe extends to a place that never ends,_

_Which is maybe just inside a little jar!_

  


Ezra was intrigued now. He'd never thought of that, but it was an interesting concept.__

  


_It's a great big universe, and we're all really puny; we're just tiny little specks about the size of Mickey Rooney._

_Though we don't know how we got here, we're an important part here!_

_It's a big universe, and it's ours!_

  


"Well that was a bad ending. They spent the entire song singing about how NOT important we are in the universe, and then they say that we ARE important?" Ezra grimaced in disgust. 

His glower metamorphisized into a sneer, though as he clicked and dragged his "special program" onto the disk. In a few short taps on the keyboard he had modified this copy to activate at the next accessing of the file. Ezra repeated the process on each of the other diskettes. 

Giggling maniacally, he skipped downstairs and redeposited the array into the desk drawer. He double-checked to make sure that everything was as he found it before sliding the drawer back into its home within the heavy oaken escritoire. He heard the lock click into place and then swaggered to his mother's office to replace the tools he had borrowed. He allowed himself the luxury of pride in his own genius now, since he knew that he wouldn't be able to revel in his accomplishment once his parents got home. He wasn't sure if he had it within his skill to keep a straight face next time he got called down to the living room for another so-called "lesson." He couldn't wait to see his father's reaction when he inserted a disk and the virus rearranged the sound bytes. All that would be heard would be static.

Ezra danced all the way upstairs and back under the covers.


End file.
